Great looking pizza. That sheeter really does make all the difference.

I noticed your tiny blisters on the crust. I am thinking you are right that in addition to dough temperature and oven temperature, the sheeting process might have something to do with getting that result.

Looking back on my first few pies I posted years ago I feel I have come a long way. In the time since, I think my pizza took the biggest jump in the intended direction after purchasing the sheeter. Unfortunately that is one of the most expensive pieces to get for this style. Not only does it make it easier to create, but it speeds up the turnaround of experiments. I don't even focus on the sheeting process anymore as I do the dough ingredients and oven specs.

Of course this would not have been possible without the many regulars who contribute to the forums, specifically the RT pizza thread. Hopefully by giving back the recipe/technique it will inspire others to go "semi-commercial".

Hi everyone. I'm new here (complete story in the new member forum) and like DNA Dan, I've been after the perfect pizza with the convenience of making it at home and making it myself. I'm happy to say I've finally had a chance to try Dan's recipe and to date, it's the closest I've come to the flavor profile I'm after! So first, a big thanks to Dan for the recipe!

I took photos of my pizza and I'm sorry I don't have them to post quite yet (but I will).

So, I didn't follow the recipe to the letter (mostly because I already had some ingredients and didn't want to spend for the exact items in the recipe, not just yet anyway).

Here are most of my changes/screw-ups:

1. Couldn't find "Old English" during my regular trip the grocery store (can you believe it?) so I had to use Heineken's "fine malt liquor." I also failed to read the adjective "gently" and boiled the heck out of it haha. It turned a bit dark. I guess I was more interested in making sure the yeast survived. 2. I got ahead of myself and "mixed the dry ingredients," including the sugar so my poor yeast didn't have the sugar to feast on while mixing in the warm beer.3. Used Crisco I had on hand even though I found a huge VAT of Manteca at the store (where would I store that!)4. I ended up refrigerating the dough a bit longer than the recipe called for only because it was hard to find the time to roll out the dough and make the pizza (especially given the additional refrigeration requirements after it's rolled out). We've got a little one so extravagant kitchen experiments often have to wait for the weekend. I made the dough on Thursday, made the pie on Sunday.5. I didn't have a commercial sheeter so when I pulled the dough out of the fridge, I split it into 3 balls and rolled out 3 sheets, put them all together, rolled it thin and for whatever reason, I felt compelled to fold it in half and roll out my final thickness (thinness?). 6. Couldn't find King Arthur Dry baker's milk so I just used the store brand7. I had some expensive King Arthur Organic Bread Flour (unbromated + unbleached) that I had used with good success in other recipes so I used it.

So, screw-ups and changes aside, the dough was blistered, didn't get overdone on the bottom in the oven @500 degrees for about 11 minutes and tasted GREAT. My biggest disappointment was the final thickness of the pie. It remained very thin! I did roll out the dough very thin but I was hoping for more "oven spring" if that's the correct term? I had all the properties I was expecting, good crispness with a doughy center and nice color but it was just thin.

Any ideas? Did I go overboard on the "lamination" process? I tried really hard to get it the same thickness your sheeter would output but of course this took me a lot more passes with the rolling pin. Maybe the dough was overworked? Maybe since I'm rolling it by hand I shouldn't strive for such a thin final sheet? Maybe having it be say 1/4 of an inch would be better? I look forward to any ideas you have. Oh, one last question, I weighed everything out per the recipe but it seemed like less ADY than I've used for most recipes I've made (and a ton more flour). It was maybe 1/2 a traditional packet of Fleischmann’s. Would this make a difference?

Great to hear you had success with the recipe! All the substitutions you made were fine. I often do that when I run out of something. I am making tonight's pie with Mickey's malt liquor. I also ran out of shortening and used crisco. These changes don't really matter too much in the end.

On the dough side, the critical items are using a boiled-off malt liquor and the proper hydration in the dough. As long as there is some sugar, salt, yeast, bit of dry milk and a solid fat at room temp, it will work just fine.

On the technique side, the critical factors are minimum fermentation time, refrigerated fermentation and the lamination. I have found just as you, that you can tweak a lot of these variables and the basic premise is still good. You have the basic recipe and techniques, now you just need to experiment with different items for each, dry milk, ovaltine, malted milk, non-dairy creamer, etc. This is what I have been doing almost every week !

To answer your question, I think you are 100% correct that the dough was over-developed. That is the most difficult thing to overcome without using a sheeter. Some folks on here use a pasta roller and seam the pieces together. Best advice I can give if you have to use a rolling pin is to make 3 skins, and just dock them together. This way if each piece is over-developed at least you will have 3 layers in there to trap steam. The yeast amount is low because of the long ferment. The bubbling action you want is not really the result of yeast activity, but trapped moisture in the layers. This turns to steam while cooking and puffs up the dough.

I have been thinking more about this lack of sheeter in the home setting and I think on a previous pie I found the answer. It has been shown if you make the dough more hydrated you can roll it out easier and still make this style with some decency. However, to keep the same hydration ratio means changing the overall texture of the crust. The answer I think lies in making a dough with more slack. The last one I made with beer buds (instead of beer), Non-diastatic malt powder and no sugar had quite a bit more slack to it. Even though I kept the hydration about the same, I thought to myself, "gee I could probably roll this out by hand."

Next week I will play with this a bit to see if it's doable. The only drawback to last week's pie was the taste. I did not use malt liquor in the dough. I am unsure if the beer buds, non-diastatic malt, or lack of sugar made the dough have so much slack. Regardless, it still puffed up good and had great texture.

Thanks for the reply! So are you suggesting to not even roll the 3 layers down together, instead just using the docker to lightly press them together? Seems like they would really easily separate during cooking! I wish I had take photos of my dough rolling process. It really did turn out beautifully despite it's failed rise in the oven. I cleared off my beech wood kitchen table, cleaned it and then used it as a huge floured preparation surface!

I know the dough had lots of steam going through it because my cheese bubbled and foamed up like I've never seen before! I was actually worried at first. It just didn't rise up!

You need to roll them together, just don't press too hard. If you seam them together with lots of rolling and pressing it's just going to reform into one piece again. Give it a few passes, dock it, and call it done. Can't wait to see your pics.

Thanks for the reply! So are you suggesting to not even roll the 3 layers down together, instead just using the docker to lightly press them together? Seems like they would really easily separate during cooking! I wish I had take photos of my dough rolling process. It really did turn out beautifully despite it's failed rise in the oven. I cleared off my beech wood kitchen table, cleaned it and then used it as a huge floured preparation surface!

I know the dough had lots of steam going through it because my cheese bubbled and foamed up like I've never seen before! I was actually worried at first. It just didn't rise up!

It will work, as Dan said. I have been using just such a technique for a few years now to make a Round Table pizza clone using Lydia's cheater recipe. She made a video of the procedure which can be found here:

For that recipe, which creates a pizza which is similar to what you are making, it involves 3 thin layers laid on top of each other, sealed by using a pizza cutter to cut out the circles (I use a pizza screen as a template), and docking the dough. Although the Round Table is not a true cracker style crust, it is a lower hydration dough and it does come out well.

OMG! Dan I see this is an old post but I had to tell you and I hope you see this, I have worked at numerous Pizza places over the years including big chains and Mom and Pops. That is one of the best looking crusts I have ever seen. I can't wait to try it. I wonder if you used an amber ale like fat tire , alaskan amber . how it would taste.

Thanks for the compliments Warren! It's all been trial and error over several years. It isn't easy to produce a commercial taste in the home environment. There's a lot of supplies the average person just doesn't have access to.

Lately I have been experimenting with growing different yeasts with different substrates. Then using the byproducts of the yeast (Which is basically a Dry Malt Extract solution) instead of water. I have pretty much concluded that the yeast itself does not add as much to the flavor as their byproducts do. I'll make up some brewer's yeast in a flask, let it grow, then refrigerate it for days to slowly produce complex molecules and let the yeast settle out.

This is similar to the beer approach, essentially it is a primitive beer without the hops, Rye, etc. Despite my efforts, this still does not produce as robust a flavor as malt liquor does. I assume this is because all the ingredients of making a beer are missing. I keep finding myself going back to the malt liquor approach, burning off some of the alcohol and using that instead of water. Seems to be the easiest way to achieve the flavor I am after. So now I am going down the path you outlined, that is to try different "big" beers with huge profiles. I recently did one using Kokanee, (a Canadian Lager along the lines of Molson) and that was pretty tasty. We also have a local brew pub here which makes a really good blonde ale that is very robust and gives a great taste. Grab your favorite beer and give it a try. It's all about proofing the yeast so they get a jump on their growth and don't die in the alcohol. I can do this with 100% beer and 1% yeast and still get a rise out of the dough.

Hey DNA dan, great pie! Mushrooms look AWESOME. What did you do to those shrooms? Did you just slice and apply, or were they cooked first? What kind of mushrooms are they?

Thanks!

I dislike the soggy watery mess you get from putting fresh mushrooms directly on pizza. I like a LOT of mushrooms, and putting them on fresh just doesn't work well. So what I do is slice them up and precook them on a cookie sheet for about 10 minutes. I then put them in a potato ricer and squeeze the hell out of them. What you end up with is a brick of compressed mushroom meat that you can put on your pies really thick. Some will call it blasphemy, since some of the flavor is contained in the juice, I however feel more flavor is concentrated in the meat of the mushroom itself.

I have been playing around with incorporating beer into my crusts and I have adopted a technique which preserves more of the compounds in the beer. Rather than heating it up, I put a container of it in the freezer and let it partially freeze. I then skim off the ice and let it re-freeze again. I keep doing this until I have reduced the volume by ~50%. Basically I am making a concentrated beer extract. I have overcome the alcohol killing the yeast problem by proofing the yeast in sugar water. This gets the yeast super active and they survive better in the dough made with the ice-skimmed beer despite there being alcohol in the dough. I have another experiment setup for tonight, but I will post an updated recipe with photos soon.

I have been extracting the water and alcohol from beer using various methods but it seems boiling it is the easiest approach. Below is an updated version of this recipe. The changes are:

Ingredients1) Increased the yeast to 2.5%. At this level you can taste it in the dough and it adds more flavor to the crust profile. However, the dough continues to rise during the cold ferment, so I would not suggest pushing more than 24 hours on the cold ferment. I do mine overnight, so this works okay for me. 2) Split the liquid to show how I proof the yeast and still add the beer. 3) Added the cumin back to the sauce. 4) I use the beer extract in the sauce instead of water.

TechniqueThis is where I have made the most changes. I have been trying to limit the amount of passes through the sheeter. I now have it down to about 4 passes. The initial sheet I have been sheeting thinner so that I can complete with ONE final pass once I do the fold. I find that if I do more passes after folding, the liklihood of having less layer separation increases. So I try to just do one pass once it's folded.